TN Vol 0320
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This article is from Tricitiessports.com by Dr. John Hancock...
At least two reliable sources within The University of Tennessee Athletics Department have confirmed that Head Football Coach Phillip Fulmer will make several major changes in his staff at the end of this current football season. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, these staffers, one of whom is an Assistant Athletics Director, said that at least three coaches will be terminated or will submit their resignations or retirements.
The two slated to be axed are Wide Receivers Coach Pat Washington, who has been on The Hill since 1995, and Offensive Line Coach Jimmy Ray Stephens, who has been at UT since 2002. The sources stated that Fulmer has become increasingly agitated and upset over the lack of development of the wide receiving corps, which has been touted as one of the most talented in Vol history. He has also been unhappy with Stephens job performance. As a former Offensive Line coach himself, Fulmer has been very displeased with the results Stephens has achieved since he replaced Mike Barry.
Other major changes in the works will include the re-hiring of David Cutcliffe as Quarterbacks Coach, Associate Head Coach, and Co-Offensive Coordinator. He will share that latter title with present OC Randy Sanders, who will be moved to Washingtons former position as Wide Receivers coach, a position he coached for the Vols in 1991 and 1992 under former Head Coach Johnny Majors. Sanders has been at Tennessee since 1989 and Cutcliffes former tenure at UT dates all the way back to a part-time position he held in 1982, until he left to become the head coach of the Ole Miss Rebels in 1998.
Cutcliffe would not agree to return if it meant that would be at the expense of his longtime friend Sanders. Thus, this deal has been struck, but Cutcliffe will clearly be in charge of the offense from this point forward in the Fulmer regime. He had toyed with the idea of taking the Kentucky head football job that will surely be open at the end of the year, but his longtime friend Mitch Barnhart, the UK AD, is on shaky ground in his job as well, and he didnt want to be in a situation where his boss had an uncertain future.
David and his family moved back to Knoxville this year following his resignation as QB coach at Notre Dame after he developed heart problems. His doctors have given him the green light to return to coaching now. He and his wife Karen are very happy in Knoxville and may be building a new home for themselves, another indicator that he will move from his temporary radio work back to UT, and not pursue another head coaching job, at least at this time.
Cutcliffe has been dropping hints all over the place on Knoxville and Nashville radio that he is coming back to the UT staff and rejoining his old friend, Fulmer. He was a prominent participant in the retiring of Peyton Mannings jersey Saturday night at Neyland Stadium, which proved to be the highlight of the night, as Steve Spurriers South Carolina Gamecocks won their first game in school history in Knoxville in 13 tries. In fact, Cutcliffe made a slip of the tongue in pregame comments on the radio in which he talked about if I get back involved in the UT offense.
In making those remarks, Cutcliffe talked about how the Tennessee offense that he ran and refined, was an ever-evolving attack. He pointed out that the same offense broke and set all of the Ole Miss offensive records when he was head coach there, and that he expects that he could and would tweak things quite a bit were he to rejoin the staff. He believes the UT offense can still work if it is managed properly.
Influential UT Trustee John Thunder Thornton, who was very instrumental in getting Athletics Director Mike Hamilton hired and in whose home Fulmer met with others, including his attorney, involving the NCAA investigation of Alabama, has been said to be upset with Stephens coaching style for some time. He and other big donors and boosters have pressured Fulmer to make the changes.
It was a true embarrassment nationally that Tennessee was only able to score barely half as many points at home against South Carolina as Vanderbilt did on the road in Columbia against the Gamecocks a week ago, and scored less than Kentucky scored on them, also on the road, two weeks ago. With all of the ample talent the Vols have, things have really come to a head regarding the absolute necessity of major coaching changes at UT.
For those that try to argue that the Vols dont have as much talent as anyone in America despite having recruiting classes that have been consistently in the Top 5 nationally, they need look no further than Mannings own comments from last night, "The talent is there. They have the players. They have guys that can make a lot of plays. Steve Spurrier said prior to the game that UT was overloaded with talent at all positions. Urban Meyer said that Tennessee was the most talented team he ever coached against. Yet both these coaches found a way to beat the Big Orange with less talent. UAB Coach Watson Brown, a superb judge of offensive talent and a longtime Fulmer friend, said that UT had more talent this year than the 1998 national championship team had. ESPN analyst Mark May commented after the Carolina game about how badly coached the offensive linemen are.
One other impetus for the change is that the sales of the new club seating planned for Neyland Stadium, which is to fund all of the $100 million worth of improvements and renovations over the next several years, has ground to a screeching halt with the poor performance of this team. Hamilton had told Fulmer he needed to make staff changes after the 2003 season, but he was ignored since he was new on the job. This time the funds to increase and extend Fulmers $2 million-plus annual contract are being threatened.
Even most of Phillips friends who both played and coached with him, many of whom now do commentary on the radio occasionally, realize he has been in a state of denial regarding the status of his football team and the root causes of the problems. These constructive criticisms, including the facts that the offensive linemen are too big and out of shape, that the receivers are undisciplined and have an attitude problem, and that the offense is stale and unimaginative, are things that fans have been saying for years.
Fulmer is finally taking these criticisms seriously. He is a good man who was a tough competitor as a player. He is a tireless recruiter. He has reluctantly gotten over some of his stubbornness and realized he needs some breaths of fresh air on his stale staff that has run out of ideas. The family atmosphere wants can and will still be preserved by these changes. He has been letting down the players he has recruited by not making the necessary changes that most of us have known needed to be made for several seasons now if he is to win championships again. Hopefully, he hasnt waited too long, since many of these moves should have been made years ago, and this may be too little too late to save his program and his own job.
Phillip himself will take over much of the coaching of the offensive line, getting more intimately involved with the position he formerly played and coached. Greg Adkins, who has been coaching tight ends and part of the OL with Stephens, will have an expanded role in this area as well. A new OL coach will not be hired to replace Stephens. Instead, a full-time special teams coach will be hired as the replacement, relieving Steve Caldwell of those duties. This would be a good time to replace Caldwell, who has one of the weakest resumes on the staff, as well, but that probably is not in the works. Washington has also been the primary assistant to Caldwell in coaching special teams.
In addition, Larry Slade will be retiring as the defensive backs coach due to health issues. Many have questioned Slades laidback approach to coaching. Hopefully, Fulmer will be able to find someone to fire up the team to replace him. Thus, there will be at least two faces on the football staff on The Hill, in addition to bringing back an old one, and Fulmer has a chance to substantially upgrade his staff in all areas if he makes the right hires.
These moves were decided upon before the South Carolina loss and will take place no matter what the outcome of the rest of the seasons games. Fulmer began quietly researching coaching talent nationally in the wake of the loss to Alabama. There is plenty to choose from. These would be the most extensive changes in Fulmers staff since he became head coach 13 seasons ago at Tennessee. Anyone who knows Fulmer well knows that these are about the most radical changes that he could be expected to make, given his reluctance to make any changes at all in his staff. The teams slide from being ranked #3 nationally to out altogether of the Top 25 has been one of the worst collapses in modern UT history, and has certainly been a factor in bringing on the moves.
One of the big reasons for luring Cutcliffe back into the Big Orange family, in addition to injecting new life into a lethargic offense which has ranked near the bottom in all categories nationally in 2005, is to jumpstart quarterback development again. It is no secret that Fulmer covets high school junior Jimmy Clausen as the next big thing at UT in the QB department. He is the last in the line of Clausens, following his brothers and fellow starting UT Quarterbacks Casey and Rick, to come out of California, and by all accounts, the most talented.
Phillip also sees the hiring of Cutcliffe as a way of turning the offense over to a coordinator in whom he has absolute confidence and trust, similar to the deference he shows Associate Head Coach John Chavis as far as the defense is concerned. He also knows that the chances of recruiting Clausen and other top-notch quarterbacks are enhanced by hiring back the coach who tutored both Peyton and Eli Manning, now considered two of the best QBs in the NFL.
Fulmer will move quickly on these changes as soon as the Kentucky game is played in Lexington on November 26 to end the regular season. There will be no hurry to hire a new special teams coach, however, as Fulmer has used Judy Jackson, Associate Director of Student-Athlete Welfare as an NCAA-designated recruiter in the past when he has had a staff opening, and it has paid dividends in recruiting in having her go into recruits homes. Expect him to do the same thing in the upcoming recruiting wars, as Jackson is a huge asset in that department. There will be no reason to have a special teams coach in place until spring practice begins.
NCAA rules limit the number of coaches overall on a staff and also how many people can be designated to be on the road recruiting. Fulmer will use these rules to his ultimate advantage in every way by becoming involved in his first love in coaching again, the offensive line.
The disenchantment with Washington has been simmering for a long time. Phillip has been given latitude in giving staff raises and even though Washington has been one of the longest serving members on his staff, he has consistently been given the smallest raises of any coach on the staff in the hope that it might motivate him to do better. However, the receivers simply have not performed well or been properly developed under Washingtons tutelage. Any casual observer of the game can see that they are not taught to run routes correctly. Many NFL scouts who come to UTs practices have commented on this in the past.
Tennessee will attempt to return to smash-mouth football in 2006, but with the passing game setting up the run, as it did when Cutcliffe was previously on the staff. A great opportunity to play for the national championship was missed this year. UT had far more talent than anyone in the SEC in what has proved to be a down year in the league. The Vols should have dominated their opponents. The corrections Fulmer is finally making, many of which have been suggested publicly long ago by this writer and others, should pay big dividends in his final years at the helm. The production of his offense has steadily declined since his Vols won the national championship in 1998, and the problems have been in the coaching arena, not with the ample talent he recruits annually.
The sources for this story are reliable career staffers at UT. One of them is someone I have known all my life. There is much internal strife among the coaching staff on The Hill now. The family atmosphere that Phillip has tried to foster has been fractured. Fulmers public comments about the performance of some of his units have indicated these changes were forthcoming. The manner in which the changes will be made and the substance of those changes may restore order again in the Vol family.
Spring practice next year will be lively on The Hill. With a big, physical, more mobile quarterback like Jonathan Crompton in the mix, the offense will be much more able to move the ball and have more options in the attack. Cutcliffe should be able to tutor both Crompton and Ainge, assuming he doesnt transfer elsewhere, into very good QBs who can win in the SEC. The second coming of Cutcliffe should help Ainge decide to stay put, and will help Fulmer recruit better talent at that key position over the next few seasons.
Fulmer is also faced with the prospect that some of his staff might choose to leave on their own for greener pastures. Of course, the coaches who have been in highest demand by the NFL and other schools have been Chavis, Dan Brooks, and Trooper Taylor. Some have even suggested that Sanders will look elsewhere, especially with these changes. However, look for him to continue, as he and Cutcliffe are very close friends and Cutcliffe was and is his mentor. It is doubtful that any of the other staff will leave, either, as most see these moves as very positive for a bright future for themselves at Tennessee.
Phillip Fulmer has always been a micromanager of his program. With these changes, he will transition into more of a CEO role in a major corporation. Make no mistake about it, UT football is a big business. The best coaches like Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, etc., have hired coordinators that have a wide degree of latitude to run their units and have taken credit for their successes. They were and are great ambassadors for their institutions, as is Fulmer.
Things have the possibility to get better in a hurry with these positive changes in his program. They cant get much worse than they did Saturday night on national TV. The talent is already there and with some fired-up, rejuvenated, focused, and motivated coaches with something to prove, the results will be good ones for the Vols. Many will still not be satisfied with these reformations of the staff, but it is the biggest shakeup in well over a decade and will most likely be the biggest of Fulmers tenure.
At least two reliable sources within The University of Tennessee Athletics Department have confirmed that Head Football Coach Phillip Fulmer will make several major changes in his staff at the end of this current football season. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, these staffers, one of whom is an Assistant Athletics Director, said that at least three coaches will be terminated or will submit their resignations or retirements.
The two slated to be axed are Wide Receivers Coach Pat Washington, who has been on The Hill since 1995, and Offensive Line Coach Jimmy Ray Stephens, who has been at UT since 2002. The sources stated that Fulmer has become increasingly agitated and upset over the lack of development of the wide receiving corps, which has been touted as one of the most talented in Vol history. He has also been unhappy with Stephens job performance. As a former Offensive Line coach himself, Fulmer has been very displeased with the results Stephens has achieved since he replaced Mike Barry.
Other major changes in the works will include the re-hiring of David Cutcliffe as Quarterbacks Coach, Associate Head Coach, and Co-Offensive Coordinator. He will share that latter title with present OC Randy Sanders, who will be moved to Washingtons former position as Wide Receivers coach, a position he coached for the Vols in 1991 and 1992 under former Head Coach Johnny Majors. Sanders has been at Tennessee since 1989 and Cutcliffes former tenure at UT dates all the way back to a part-time position he held in 1982, until he left to become the head coach of the Ole Miss Rebels in 1998.
Cutcliffe would not agree to return if it meant that would be at the expense of his longtime friend Sanders. Thus, this deal has been struck, but Cutcliffe will clearly be in charge of the offense from this point forward in the Fulmer regime. He had toyed with the idea of taking the Kentucky head football job that will surely be open at the end of the year, but his longtime friend Mitch Barnhart, the UK AD, is on shaky ground in his job as well, and he didnt want to be in a situation where his boss had an uncertain future.
David and his family moved back to Knoxville this year following his resignation as QB coach at Notre Dame after he developed heart problems. His doctors have given him the green light to return to coaching now. He and his wife Karen are very happy in Knoxville and may be building a new home for themselves, another indicator that he will move from his temporary radio work back to UT, and not pursue another head coaching job, at least at this time.
Cutcliffe has been dropping hints all over the place on Knoxville and Nashville radio that he is coming back to the UT staff and rejoining his old friend, Fulmer. He was a prominent participant in the retiring of Peyton Mannings jersey Saturday night at Neyland Stadium, which proved to be the highlight of the night, as Steve Spurriers South Carolina Gamecocks won their first game in school history in Knoxville in 13 tries. In fact, Cutcliffe made a slip of the tongue in pregame comments on the radio in which he talked about if I get back involved in the UT offense.
In making those remarks, Cutcliffe talked about how the Tennessee offense that he ran and refined, was an ever-evolving attack. He pointed out that the same offense broke and set all of the Ole Miss offensive records when he was head coach there, and that he expects that he could and would tweak things quite a bit were he to rejoin the staff. He believes the UT offense can still work if it is managed properly.
Influential UT Trustee John Thunder Thornton, who was very instrumental in getting Athletics Director Mike Hamilton hired and in whose home Fulmer met with others, including his attorney, involving the NCAA investigation of Alabama, has been said to be upset with Stephens coaching style for some time. He and other big donors and boosters have pressured Fulmer to make the changes.
It was a true embarrassment nationally that Tennessee was only able to score barely half as many points at home against South Carolina as Vanderbilt did on the road in Columbia against the Gamecocks a week ago, and scored less than Kentucky scored on them, also on the road, two weeks ago. With all of the ample talent the Vols have, things have really come to a head regarding the absolute necessity of major coaching changes at UT.
For those that try to argue that the Vols dont have as much talent as anyone in America despite having recruiting classes that have been consistently in the Top 5 nationally, they need look no further than Mannings own comments from last night, "The talent is there. They have the players. They have guys that can make a lot of plays. Steve Spurrier said prior to the game that UT was overloaded with talent at all positions. Urban Meyer said that Tennessee was the most talented team he ever coached against. Yet both these coaches found a way to beat the Big Orange with less talent. UAB Coach Watson Brown, a superb judge of offensive talent and a longtime Fulmer friend, said that UT had more talent this year than the 1998 national championship team had. ESPN analyst Mark May commented after the Carolina game about how badly coached the offensive linemen are.
One other impetus for the change is that the sales of the new club seating planned for Neyland Stadium, which is to fund all of the $100 million worth of improvements and renovations over the next several years, has ground to a screeching halt with the poor performance of this team. Hamilton had told Fulmer he needed to make staff changes after the 2003 season, but he was ignored since he was new on the job. This time the funds to increase and extend Fulmers $2 million-plus annual contract are being threatened.
Even most of Phillips friends who both played and coached with him, many of whom now do commentary on the radio occasionally, realize he has been in a state of denial regarding the status of his football team and the root causes of the problems. These constructive criticisms, including the facts that the offensive linemen are too big and out of shape, that the receivers are undisciplined and have an attitude problem, and that the offense is stale and unimaginative, are things that fans have been saying for years.
Fulmer is finally taking these criticisms seriously. He is a good man who was a tough competitor as a player. He is a tireless recruiter. He has reluctantly gotten over some of his stubbornness and realized he needs some breaths of fresh air on his stale staff that has run out of ideas. The family atmosphere wants can and will still be preserved by these changes. He has been letting down the players he has recruited by not making the necessary changes that most of us have known needed to be made for several seasons now if he is to win championships again. Hopefully, he hasnt waited too long, since many of these moves should have been made years ago, and this may be too little too late to save his program and his own job.
Phillip himself will take over much of the coaching of the offensive line, getting more intimately involved with the position he formerly played and coached. Greg Adkins, who has been coaching tight ends and part of the OL with Stephens, will have an expanded role in this area as well. A new OL coach will not be hired to replace Stephens. Instead, a full-time special teams coach will be hired as the replacement, relieving Steve Caldwell of those duties. This would be a good time to replace Caldwell, who has one of the weakest resumes on the staff, as well, but that probably is not in the works. Washington has also been the primary assistant to Caldwell in coaching special teams.
In addition, Larry Slade will be retiring as the defensive backs coach due to health issues. Many have questioned Slades laidback approach to coaching. Hopefully, Fulmer will be able to find someone to fire up the team to replace him. Thus, there will be at least two faces on the football staff on The Hill, in addition to bringing back an old one, and Fulmer has a chance to substantially upgrade his staff in all areas if he makes the right hires.
These moves were decided upon before the South Carolina loss and will take place no matter what the outcome of the rest of the seasons games. Fulmer began quietly researching coaching talent nationally in the wake of the loss to Alabama. There is plenty to choose from. These would be the most extensive changes in Fulmers staff since he became head coach 13 seasons ago at Tennessee. Anyone who knows Fulmer well knows that these are about the most radical changes that he could be expected to make, given his reluctance to make any changes at all in his staff. The teams slide from being ranked #3 nationally to out altogether of the Top 25 has been one of the worst collapses in modern UT history, and has certainly been a factor in bringing on the moves.
One of the big reasons for luring Cutcliffe back into the Big Orange family, in addition to injecting new life into a lethargic offense which has ranked near the bottom in all categories nationally in 2005, is to jumpstart quarterback development again. It is no secret that Fulmer covets high school junior Jimmy Clausen as the next big thing at UT in the QB department. He is the last in the line of Clausens, following his brothers and fellow starting UT Quarterbacks Casey and Rick, to come out of California, and by all accounts, the most talented.
Phillip also sees the hiring of Cutcliffe as a way of turning the offense over to a coordinator in whom he has absolute confidence and trust, similar to the deference he shows Associate Head Coach John Chavis as far as the defense is concerned. He also knows that the chances of recruiting Clausen and other top-notch quarterbacks are enhanced by hiring back the coach who tutored both Peyton and Eli Manning, now considered two of the best QBs in the NFL.
Fulmer will move quickly on these changes as soon as the Kentucky game is played in Lexington on November 26 to end the regular season. There will be no hurry to hire a new special teams coach, however, as Fulmer has used Judy Jackson, Associate Director of Student-Athlete Welfare as an NCAA-designated recruiter in the past when he has had a staff opening, and it has paid dividends in recruiting in having her go into recruits homes. Expect him to do the same thing in the upcoming recruiting wars, as Jackson is a huge asset in that department. There will be no reason to have a special teams coach in place until spring practice begins.
NCAA rules limit the number of coaches overall on a staff and also how many people can be designated to be on the road recruiting. Fulmer will use these rules to his ultimate advantage in every way by becoming involved in his first love in coaching again, the offensive line.
The disenchantment with Washington has been simmering for a long time. Phillip has been given latitude in giving staff raises and even though Washington has been one of the longest serving members on his staff, he has consistently been given the smallest raises of any coach on the staff in the hope that it might motivate him to do better. However, the receivers simply have not performed well or been properly developed under Washingtons tutelage. Any casual observer of the game can see that they are not taught to run routes correctly. Many NFL scouts who come to UTs practices have commented on this in the past.
Tennessee will attempt to return to smash-mouth football in 2006, but with the passing game setting up the run, as it did when Cutcliffe was previously on the staff. A great opportunity to play for the national championship was missed this year. UT had far more talent than anyone in the SEC in what has proved to be a down year in the league. The Vols should have dominated their opponents. The corrections Fulmer is finally making, many of which have been suggested publicly long ago by this writer and others, should pay big dividends in his final years at the helm. The production of his offense has steadily declined since his Vols won the national championship in 1998, and the problems have been in the coaching arena, not with the ample talent he recruits annually.
The sources for this story are reliable career staffers at UT. One of them is someone I have known all my life. There is much internal strife among the coaching staff on The Hill now. The family atmosphere that Phillip has tried to foster has been fractured. Fulmers public comments about the performance of some of his units have indicated these changes were forthcoming. The manner in which the changes will be made and the substance of those changes may restore order again in the Vol family.
Spring practice next year will be lively on The Hill. With a big, physical, more mobile quarterback like Jonathan Crompton in the mix, the offense will be much more able to move the ball and have more options in the attack. Cutcliffe should be able to tutor both Crompton and Ainge, assuming he doesnt transfer elsewhere, into very good QBs who can win in the SEC. The second coming of Cutcliffe should help Ainge decide to stay put, and will help Fulmer recruit better talent at that key position over the next few seasons.
Fulmer is also faced with the prospect that some of his staff might choose to leave on their own for greener pastures. Of course, the coaches who have been in highest demand by the NFL and other schools have been Chavis, Dan Brooks, and Trooper Taylor. Some have even suggested that Sanders will look elsewhere, especially with these changes. However, look for him to continue, as he and Cutcliffe are very close friends and Cutcliffe was and is his mentor. It is doubtful that any of the other staff will leave, either, as most see these moves as very positive for a bright future for themselves at Tennessee.
Phillip Fulmer has always been a micromanager of his program. With these changes, he will transition into more of a CEO role in a major corporation. Make no mistake about it, UT football is a big business. The best coaches like Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, etc., have hired coordinators that have a wide degree of latitude to run their units and have taken credit for their successes. They were and are great ambassadors for their institutions, as is Fulmer.
Things have the possibility to get better in a hurry with these positive changes in his program. They cant get much worse than they did Saturday night on national TV. The talent is already there and with some fired-up, rejuvenated, focused, and motivated coaches with something to prove, the results will be good ones for the Vols. Many will still not be satisfied with these reformations of the staff, but it is the biggest shakeup in well over a decade and will most likely be the biggest of Fulmers tenure.
:biggrin2:
